Post a controversial opinion

I made that up

We should have a thread for nominations

You're otm though. The military, college/uni, the entertainment biz, and let us not forget the church: all institutes with huge power dynamics.

xp the fact that you made it up didn't come through your prose so that's one

I’ll fess up that the “simian with less hair” bit is both dehumanizing as well as universalizing bad conduct. It wasn’t necessary either but I reflexively needed to speciate youth from maturity 🤔 🤔

saying that almost everyone has done it lessens the implied individual guilt.

I don't think this is true, but what it does do is highlight how insufficient individual guilt is as a response

My memory of my teens and twenties is hazy, but I think I performed being a Sensitive New Age Guy, perhaps overmuch. I went to protests and held signs. I wore buttons. I attended lectures by Naomi Wolf and Germaine Greer; I read Susan Faludi; I did a non-insignificant amount of graduate-level Woolf scholarship.

To a degree that I am not proud of, I think this was at least partly a dating strategy. In retrospect, I can't say how much of it was following my own lights and how much was "will artsy feminist riot-grrly chicks dig that I am doing this?" With the unspoken corollary that they would presumably reward my wokeness by going to bed with me. If I was reading something very woke and third-wavey I sometimes tried to casually make sure that the women in my life knew it.

As I said, not proud of the simian side of that behavior pattern. Of course this was happening in a specifically chosen cultural surround: liberal arts school, bohemian neighborhood, lots of sex and drugs. In that surround, wokeness-avant-la-lettre was valued, not frat-bro alpha-male jock confidence. I have no idea how I would have behaved in a different environment.

pledged Phi Delt I imagine?

Harsh

Sigma Nu obv

Controversial opinion: some Greek societies have redeeming qualities

(Full disclosure I hate them all on principle)

I don't have any concept of what you guys are talking about with the Greek stuff. Completely outside my orbit.

But I saw Vagina Monologues TWICE, dudes. Many of my peers bought guitars and started learning Zeppelin, Hendrix, Rush. When I bought a guitar I immediately started learning Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin, and Joni Mitchell tunes.

Was I doing what I wanted, or what I thought would land me chicks? I don't know, and cannot know at this remove. I do know that it "worked," in that I had a lot of female attention during that time, and only the warmest possible memories. But I carry a measure of guilt and ambivalence around how much of it was performed in order to get that attention.

Are you sure you're not just pretending to feel guilty and ambivalent?

I really bristle at this sort of contrivance, and the how its scope seemed to encompass your entire identity and lifestyle. Which I hate to say, because I don't mean to judge, and I admire your courage coming out with it. I just find it interesting that I was just p-shawing treesh and others who objected to tombots assertion, and here I am indignant toward your confession. And I have grabbed a butt or two, I think it was twice around age 19 at packed shows, even think I had a gf at the time :/ glad i cut it out when i did

let’s break out the time machine, we can all zap ourselves back to 19 and see who lines up against who in the great ILX bro battle royale

Yeah, tbc, I admire YMP's honesty (and also his sensitive-bro PUA successes); my comment was meant as light ribbing.

i am genuinely O_O at such an admission. it's validating to know my instincts were otm! i can't say thank you for doing it, but thank you for admitting it.

you guys know it's possible to be as (performatively) woke as you wannabe and still do shitty things in a more private setting, right?

'united binary states of america 'r us' would make a great gifted kid toy store name

I've long felt that the monolith of "girls" is to blame for so much of this behavior. It reminds me of how pervasive this idea was when I was in high school.

This is a line from an article about a guy I went to high school with -- he has a restaurant now and was profiled for a local writeup. i won't link it but the context is that he was reminiscing about growing up in our hometown. The writeup was published almost 3 years ago and this line continues to bounce around in my head. I looked it up and here it is:

Inside those abandoned industrial carapaces, sketchy kids built makeshift skate parks and shredded until the cops came to rustle them out. Rock shows, hard-core shows, girls, booze, rumbles. Regular shit.

Rock shows, hard-core shows, girls, booze, rumbles. Regular shit.[

It was not "regular shit" if you were a girl, a faceless nameless identityless girl. I know because I was there too and I was a girl. I am glad men are coming to grips with the way they have treated girls and young women. It doesn't undo any damage caused by treating girls as a faceless monolith to be conquered but it is validating.

You couldn't pay me to be 19 again. 26? Mosdef.

i genuinely thought that staying away from fratty sporty bros would protect me -- turns out everyone was infected, even the punk boys.

i don't think there's any personal redemption in confessing to some of the bad thoughts and actions we (I) grew up with, and nor should there be. i do think that trying not to repeat the same stuff and trying to raise young men not to be like I have been starts with a thorough self-critical audit tho.

Infected with what? Wanting to get with girls????? Not an 'infection' ESP at 19 xp

LL, uh, you're welcome, I guess?

And as NV notes, of course there's plenty of sexism and rape culture and outright evil on the cultural and political left.

However, in some defense of my youth - a lot of young people are trying on their identities with greater and lesser degrees of convincingness. And many of them don't really know where performance leaves off and authenticity begins.

Whether it's being a SNAG or being an alpha male fratbro or being a flower-child deadhead. Or even - dare I say it - being a Riot Grrl.

yeah it's why i bracketed performative, doing is being isn't it? but everybody does and bes many people throughout their lives

infected with toxic masculinity that dehumanizes people

i believe it is possible to try on different identity and engage in romantic pursuits suits without dehumanizing people

Vompletely normal masculinity is not toxic

Lol *completely, obv

enlighten us as to what normal is

oops
that got messed up because i got flustered
i believe it is possible to try on different identity suits and engage in romantic pursuits without dehumanizing people

Like, as a hetero man, you are attracted to lots of women and you have to figure out what to do about it... The attraction isn't the problem

"vompletely" otm

Lol knew that was coming

sleepingbag, you may wish to reread what La Lechera has posted.

There is a difference between "trying to get with girls" and "treating girls as a faceless monolith to be conquered."

I lived in a very female world as a child (single mother, four sisters, running a ballet school). I do think that at my best moments I was genuinely listening, genuinely interested, and genuinely treating girls and women as individuals rather than dehumanizing.

As does most everyone. But again I'd say there is nothing wrong or toxic about a general fixation/fascination/even 'objectification' of women in an object of one's desire sense so long as it doesn't manifest in amoral behavior, because unless you've undergone some sort of religious brainwashing or otherwise unnatural reprogramming, it's going to be there. Trying to say that the underlying drive is the issue rather than certain behavior is pushing way too far.

You couldn't pay me to be 19 again. 26? Mosdef.

I'd do 19 - 20 again only if I get access to all modern antidepressants and antianxiety medications and transfer to a different, smaller college. Then I'd relive that year.

The problem with the behaviour YMP is describing is being untruthful to the girls, he pretended to be a feminist, but was just trying to get with them. And as LL said, yeah, it's objectification and dehumanizing. It's just a few steps away to PUA rhetoric about women then being 'false' because they don't reward him enough for being a 'nice' man.

And I'd say that most men have behaved like that, I have behaved like that, and even when I try not to there's a part of my brain that sometimes says that women 'owe' me something. I think it's such a big part of culture, of our upbringing, in a way. The hero saves the world and therefore gets the girl. But it's not at all ok, and everyone has to get past it.

Frederik (and others) SEVERELY misread me if the takeaway is

he pretended to be a feminist, but was just trying to get with them

No. False. Wrong. If your mouse is working you can go back a page or two and reread.

Well, that's the bad version of what you wrote. I get that you are questioning your earlier behaviour.

I don't think it's quite as straightforward as being "untruthful"? if I understand correctly young YMP wasn't thinking "I don't believe these things, but I'll pretend I do in order to get something I want", but he's now questioning his real motivations were for believing what he believed (or what he believed himself to believe?)

One more time: it's not so polarized as Frederik has it.

Lots (most) of my youthful behavior felt right and felt like me and felt like the right thing to do. Still does. SOME of the behavior seems in retrospect to have been a little too calculated - what has been aptly called "performative and cookie-seeking."

If your interpretation of that is as polarized as Frederik has it ("just" trying to get with them) then I need to be clearer. I most definitely wanted to "get with" specific feminist women that I admired and liked and desired. That is true and I have said as much. Judge me as you like, but I am not sure I'm willing to say that I viewed women and girls as "a faceless monolith to be conquered."

isn't any sensitive male-feminist is pretty much obliged to be filled with self doubt about whether he is really motivated by self-interest, I feel like a sensitive male-feminist who was 100% confident that he was acting in a purely altruistic manner would get some serious side-eye off most people here

I mean, it's just a demonstration of our capacity for compartmentalization. You can, f'rinstance, simultaneously be wholly invested and immersed in feminist studies while still exhibiting behavior that undermines that investment. The trick is recognizing and correcting those inconsistencies within ourselves.

I get the nuance, YMP, but you did also write "Was I doing what I wanted, or what I thought would land me chicks?" ;)

i mean pretending to be interested in something so you can date/be with a woman is something even married men not only do but are forced to do

so

how is this controversial?

in terms of sexual intercourse, it's about consent and knowing not to sleep with a woman who is ready to pass out from drinking/drugs/going through turmoil

imo it's really hard to have the level of self-reflection, especially as a young person, to determine whether you're adopting the right ideals and ethics while also navigating through your own life with them as guiding principles

You're still kind of just taking things in and trying to put things in practice without knowing what it's like to... live? As you have more experiences and get older you start to have a mental and social hodgepodge where all the things that make sense and have worked so far remain in effect and you can evaluate new ideas with that framework

Some people have bad frameworks though, especially old people who at some point stopped taking new input. I get it, your brain's full, you just spew bullshit all the time and grabbing women worked for you in the 1960s. Shove off.

Tuomas is the only 100% pure and noble male women's studies major

XD